For many years, together with a number of design educators, I have been discussing how design can address the complex socio-technological systems that characterize our world. The issues are not new: many people and...

A Collision of Intentions, Thoughts and Avatars: that's my current definition of a service. The idea that an organization can package and delivery a service (or value) is industrial, scientific, old-fashioned and does...

I spent the first 36 years of my life living in the UK, more than half of which was spent in and around London. As such, I have a deep personal affinity to Gin, that wonderful, complex, delicious spirit made famous by...

Hacking away at San Francisco's Freespace, a pop-up space for artists, designers, developers and other creatives.I've been spending a lot of time at hackathons lately. It's not a surprise; here in the Bay Area,...

Broadly speaking, design projects may be split into three categories: now, next and future. Most of our time as designers is concerned with the now or next, but occasionally we are called upon to embrace projects which...

Imagine you move to a new city and after some time you decide to have your hair cut or get a new hairstyle. For some people, this would be a frightening thought. Based on your knowledge of the consequences of not...

sourceNote: Throughout this piece, I refer to simplicity in relation to the operation of devices or the experience of use, as opposed to a reductive or minimalist aesthetic.As with everything involving language, a...

Market shockwaves are all around. The exchange place has never been so liquid and vulnerable. In this scenario, intuition gains momentum when compared to the sciences because everybody knows that to act instantly one...

Image via FanPopIn every job there is a line between personal time and employment. In some roles, the line is very clear, demarcated by a klaxon, punch card or timesheet. In other fields of work, the line is blurred,...

Continuing our journey through Design @ Your Service, the article below is a contribution from service thinker Luis Alt (founder of live|work in Brazil). Good read!–Tennyson PinheiroTake a look around. It is very...

It has been said over and over again that we now live in a service economy. For most developed countries, that means more than 70% of their GDP is driven by the service sector. For the not so developed ones, the number...

Note: The Latin script versions of Chinese names contained in this article are for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to be accurate Pinyin (the official Latin script version of Chinese characters.It is not...

OK, I take it back. Well, some of it anyway.
In June, 2010, I posted an essay on Core77 entitled "Design Thinking: A Useful Myth." (Got a lot of responses, that one did.) Since my essay was posted, I keep encountering...

Image courtesy of smashingbuzzJeroen van Geel was invited to participate in the Redux at Interaction 13 in Toronto. Speakers were invited to reflect upon the conference content on the last day of the conference. This is...

This is the third column in a series on product licensing from materious' Bruce Tharp.So let's say that you have decided to pursue a licensing contract for your new product idea instead of trying to go into the...

The change in perception of goods being 'made in China' to 'designed in China' is very important to Chinese industry. Whereas the former is indelibly associated with high volume, low quality production, the latter...

The other night, I caught myself riveted to one of those blocks of cable programing one stumbles upon with increasing frequency: back-to-back episodes of some show you've never heard of. On this particular evening the...

Opening Ceremony of Beijing Design Week 2012Having lived in Qingdao for a few months now, it has been interesting to observe and reflect on the differences in working cultures between the West and China. Watching the...

Kickstarter made some interesting changes to the rules Project Creators must follow last week. What's really interesting about these rules, is that they mainly affect only Product Design and Hardware projects. Let me...

Large sections of the British design industry will wearily greet the onset of London Design Festival today. The first LDF in 2003 felt like a coming of age, as London celebrated our profession with a pocket version of...

You may have to wait six months to a year to get on the shelves after a buyer agrees to sell your productSo let's talk money.In the first article in this series about product licensing for industrial designers, I...

"Drawing the Passage of Time" by Niek de Snoo; photo by Ray HuWhen What Is Natural for Some Is Not for Others: Culture and DesignI was in Asia, giving a talk. I was given a remote controller for advancing my slides....

In February this year I decided to give up a cozy life in West London and move to Qingdao, China, to head up the first overseas office for one of the world's leading industrial design consultancies, Priestmangoode.In...

The designers at Orange22 landed a multi-million-dollar licensing deal for its Grid-It™ elastic storage technology, which is now in over 200 different products.This is the first in a series of columns on product...

Watching last month's meteoric funding spike for Alerta's Pebble Smartwatch you no doubt caught your inner voice asking: Could I do that? The weekend of April 21st—as the project rocketed from roughly $3 million...

This is the final post in a 7-part series from Panthea Lee of service design consultancy, Reboot. Lee is the jury captain for the 2012 Core77 Design Awards for the Service Design category. In The Messy Art of Saving the...

Like many of you, I live in the 21st century, a time when society is recognizing the damage done to the environment through our inattention to the side effects of our technologies. But one specialized niche of the world...

I'm not bad I'm just drawn that way - Jessica RabbitIdeation, or if you prefer, brainstorming, is a structured activity with many degrees of freedom within that structure. When leading sessions, I emphasize divergent,...

I'll begin my fourth and final installment of my long essay addressing the debate on "design imperialism" by admitting that it doesn't take much effort to find something about globalization to be incensed about....

There are a numerous additional "soft" benefits to conducting design research, that are often overlooked. As we continue to explore how design research works, and how it might relate to the ongoing public discussion of...

All Photos courtesy of RebootThis is the 6th post in a 7-part series from Panthea Lee of service design consultancy, Reboot. Lee is the jury captain for the 2012 Core77 Design Awards for the Service Design category. In...